Halo Wars

Not content with destroying the world of first person shooters, the Halo series has decided to now turn it's attention to destroying the real time strategy genre as well. Thus Halo Wars, the first demo to be reviewed in this blog.


Let me begin by saying, if you have not already guessed, that I am not a fan of the Halo series. I thought the first one was ok, mainly for the multi player- which was not revolutionary or new (Goldeneye did multi player much better 5 years before) The second and third Halos offered similar game play to the first one, and offered only online multi player, which for me consisted mostly of having 12 and 13 year old's scream at me in high pitched, angry voices, killing me and my character on maps they had time to master while I did grown up things like work and kiss girls. But this review is not about Halo, Halo 2, or even Halo 3. This review is about Halo Wars.


Before I begin I would just like to say that I applaud the fact that the Halo franchise is no longer sticking to it's proven system, that being remaking the same first person shooter with new skins and then running off to catch the money train. So it is good that Halo is branching out; trying new things is good.


Unfortunately people forgot to tell Halo Wars that trying new things BADLY is not good. It's just, well bad. There are several things wrong with this game. The first, and most glaring problem with this game is the fact that everything is so small. Maybe it is just my own male insecurities, but I don't like it when things on the screen are small. More accurately, I don't like it when important things on the screen are too small to see. And that is the problem with Halo Wars. The tanks and vehicles are clearly visible, but the marines and enemy soldiers are so small that it is difficult, if not impossible to tell them apart. According to the game, which actually kept score of how many enemies I killed, there were two types (at least) of enemy soldiers. You could have fooled me, I was just attacking the different dots that appeared to be shooting at me. So you can't tell what type of enemy you are attacking. So if there were a particular unit that was strong against grunts, you couldn't tell which targets are grunts, thus negating any type of strategy. In addition to this, as you advance through the game, different types of marine units become available. In the demo, these are regular marines and flame throwers. These units cant be told apart on the screen, thus reducing the strategy to clicking on all of your guys, denoted by being on one side of the map, and sending them over to kill all of their guys on the other side of the map.



This may just be a problem with the genre, but I don't think we can call Halo Wars a real time strategy game. It is more like a "point and click to attack and then build more guys and do it all again" type of game. The fact that you cannot see what type of unit you are selecting simply adds to the confusion. But, more to the point, it really doesn't matter which units you select, because they all seem to work equally well against the enemy.

And, they all work poorly against the enemy, unless they are Warthogs. For those of you not familiar with the Halo series, the Warthog (or Puma) is a kind of jeep with a large machine gun attached to the back. These things rock in Halo. They have a special attack that involves giving up on blasting the enemy with the gun and causes the whole vehicle to just run over the enemy. This is an incredibly effective attack, and that leads us to the problem with it; it is so effective that you really don't need to use anything else. These jeeps just destroy enemy units instantly when they use this special. As these attacks recharge very quickly, one jeep is able to destroy multiple infantry units. In fact, this "click the special button" strategy is so effective that the last battle of the tutorial level, I was able to destroy almost all the enemies with ONE JEEP running them over while the rest of my army stood and watched from a safe distance.

So what is good about Halo Wars? Well there are some things. First of all, the cut scenes are really pretty. The space ships are very cool looking, and all of the characters are very well drawn. Secondly, if you are a fan of the Halo series, all of the sounds and feel of the Halo franchise exist in Halo Wars. The sounds are the same sound effects, so the enemy soldiers and the guns sound authentic. The soundtrack and menus also scream Halo.

That is about it for good things. My recommendation for Halo Wars is SKIP IT. If you are a really big Halo fan, put on your Master Chief Limited Edition Helmet (I know you got it when you paid almost $100 for Halo 3- and I know you wear it!) and go down to blockbuster video and RENT IT. But only do this if you love Halo.

Some random thoughts I thought of while playing Halo Wars:

1. The space ships look very cool. I want to play as the space ships.
2. The air support in the game is very effective and powerful. Too bad the computer has control of it. Will I ever get to control it? Furthermore, why don't we just take these really cool looking space ships that we have and blow up the entire Covenant army from space?
3. The space ships still look cool.
4. These guys are so small. Is it supposed to make me feel good about myself by making me feel like a giant? Is it sad that for just a little bit, pretending to be a giant did make me feel better?
5. If I wanted a bunch of soldiers that didn't listen to me that I could barley see, I would just go outside and try to get an army of ants to attack something.
6. I still want to play as the space ships.